


There is No Ignorance

by Raven2547



Series: There is the Force [3]
Category: The Magnificent Seven (2016)
Genre: Backstory, Gen, Guilt, Prologue, Religious Undertones, Sith, a little self-hate, a lot of guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-06
Updated: 2017-01-06
Packaged: 2018-09-15 05:40:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9221483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raven2547/pseuds/Raven2547
Summary: When Goody was picked up by the Southern Order at eight he was just too old. With the right (or wrong) circumstances meeting him and his own personality clashing with the Jedi path, it's only a matter of time before it all comes crashing down.





	

'Bats in the belfry'. That's what they've called him, now and again--and who can blame them? He'd be the first to say that he's a little off his rocker after the life he's led. As his sister and father both fell to the fever, his mother held the household together by the skin of her teeth and her bone thin fingers. But even with her iron like grip on his arm all throughout his childhood she couldn't hold him when the Southern Temple came a'knockin. 

They sweet-talked her in the sitting room with tales of him being a scholar, a warrior, a man of the people in the arid lands south of their home. Lots of food for a growing boy, they'd said, and she, struggling to support the two older brothers and elderly grandparents in the rickety old farmhouse, thought this sounded like a pretty good deal. If she had to cut one loose, at least she didn't have to stick him on a train bound for nowhere or farm him out. 

Truth be told he mostly enjoyed the Order. It was hot, that's for sure, but down there everything's hot. Even winter wasn't hardly any colder sometimes. It was all the lessons he ...well hated was a strong word. He remembered his old friends there well--Jed, who could jump as high as the ceiling even though he was only six; Giovanni, whose face never so much as twitched no matter how many times Goody poked at him. Life there was everything they promised, but he never felt satisfied by it. As the elders preached compassion and understanding to all creatures he felt as if some creatures needed a firmer hand--and later he felt he could be the firm hand. He was young and foolish, he can admit it now. 

The rules of the temple chaffed him. Why could he never leave? Why did they never have a day off from training? Why were they not allowed possessions? When he came from his home they took away his picture of his family--a hand painted portrait done before his father and sister passed on. Things like this enraged him, and even that was cause for the teachers to pin him down with even stricter rules. 

"Anger," his teacher said as he held his training saber in hand to deflect training shots, "leads to hate, and hate leads to suffering, youngling."

The lessons the other younglings, the ones who had been there since birth or their toddler years, absorbed with no qualms just made him question. Question and rebel. He felt the Order was restricting him, preventing him from becoming the great man his family, his strong mother, would be proud of. 

In a sparring exercise once he struck out before the other had finished bowing, and the observing teacher drew him aside. He was not angry, they never were (which was annoying), but he did sternly confiscate Goody's saber with some 'helpful' advice: a Jedi uses the force for knowledge and defense, never attack. Pfft. 

It was nearly six months before he was given his saber back. It was still the light neutral grayish of a trainee. At thirteen his peers were starting to get their crystals--Giovanni was a neon green and Jed had a calm blue. Both were due to be picked for an early partnership with a knight or master later in their teens, and Goody was becoming restless. Much to everyone's surprise, though, when he was on his right of passage at fifteen he found his crystal (or it found him)--and it was the rare purple! He was over the moon. Not only that, but he was picked to be a padowan earlier than either of his friends, and by a respected knight of the order! 

Looking back on it now, as an adult, he can see why the man picked him. He was emotional and unstable for a Jedi, but perfect for molding. Together they did missions for the Order and he met a lot of colorful people in the South. South America, that is. They were always careful not to send him back to his home, another fact he was resentful of. His teacher was wise, and dangled teachings and talents over his head like treats for a dog. When he first witnessed bloodshed on a grand scale, he said something that stuck with Goody forever.

"Peace is a lie, Goodnight. There is only passion. Through passion you gain strength, and through strength, power. Power begets victory."

It seemed to be the complete antithesis of everything the Temple preached about. He liked it. Years went by and eventually he came to the point where he would be 'upgraded' to a knight of the Order--and they stood him in the center of the amphitheater, stared down at him with their judgmental eyes, and /denied him/. He was... well furious is a good word, but unhinged is more poetic. He's not ashamed to admit he made a bit of a scene on his exit. It was summer, so the only people who saw his meltdown were younglings and elders because all the knights and padowans were out on missions. He's also not ashamed that he raided the vault and retrieved his belongings from before. His family portrait. 

What he /is/ ashamed of... is what comes after. 

On his storm out his master caught up with him and slipped him the location of a small temple near his home, in the American South. Goody was still hot with anger, but it burned low enough for him to recognize the worth of checking it out. But not until he went to see his family. 

There wasn't much family to speak of. His elderly grandparents' graves were fairly large in the town parish. Surrounding them were the bodies of his sister and father, he remembered them passing. A small grave marked one of his older brothers' graves, just a few months after he left. Next to his father, his whip thin and strong mother lay, her firm jaw burned into his memory almost two decades after he'd last seen her. The death toll of his family left a nasty taste in his mouth and an even deeper seated hatred for the Order who removed him from the situation. Asking around town he discovered his other brother was off fighting in the war, and his decision was made. He would find his brother--and this new temple was the way to do it.

The Sith were different. While the Jedi preached compassion and control the Sith encouraged everyone to just... let loose. When he got angry somebody would be there, helping him focus the anger and hatred on one point. /This/ kind of control he was good at. Finally he was excellent, up at Giovanni's level. He was a Sith Knight within the year, and he spat on the memory of the Southern Order. Soon after his promotion the Sith allied themselves with the Confederate army and his wish to hunt down his brother came true. He was made a sharpshooter, but that was ok. He was exceptional with a rifle, if he did say so himself. It allowed a finer control, a more personal victory. 

At least, he thought so. At first it was heady, being up on a pedestal. /The Angel of Death/ they called him; they whispered the name Goodnight Robicheaux around the fire at night. He was all he had ever dreamed of being--a great man, a man his family, his mother, would be proud of. But it couldn't last. 

After Antietam he wandered through the wreckage in plainclothes. In the distance he spied some Jedi Order or another helping clean up and he walked towards them. One, by the name of Castor, had a list of dead Union and dead Confederates as far as they could tell--be it clothes being labeled with a name or a fellow soldier naming them. Being the morbid man he was, Goodnight asked a question he really didn't want the answer to.

"You got any Robicheaux's on that Confederate listing there?" He said confidently. The young man, probably a padowan, judging by his thin little braid dangling past his ear, flipped through the sheathes of parchment, scanning quickly and getting to the end then starting over. Castor looked it over once more and shook his head.

"No one by that name, sir. Good news, then?" He smiled in that bland way Goody found the acolytes always did, like they were repressing every feeling they ever felt just on principle. He smiled back the same way, then shook his head. It was good news.

"No thanks, son, I think I'll just pass on by then if's all the same to you," He tipped his hat and started away, shouldering his pack and ambling back the way he'd come. He was almost five yards away when the young man haltingly called him back.

"Sir!" He bumped elbows with Castor as he turned around, surprised to see him right there, "I, uh, could I ask why you were looking for the name Robicheaux?" 

Goody could've said it wasn't his business, but eh. He could also pretend that he was hoping the Angel was dead, but eh. He was feeling good this morning. He shrugged and said, "Lookin' for my brother is all. Theodore Robicheaux." 

The short man bobbed his head and bit his lip, shuffling the papers in his hand a little awkwardly. Goody got a sinking feeling in his gut, and he once again wished he'd never asked the question. 

"I... I'm sorry to tell you this sir," Castor started off, twisting his braid in his fingers, "but that name is on the list of casualties... and it's on the Union side, sir."

Goodnight's world dropped out from under him. Could he have been the one to shoot his brother? Could he have saved him if he weren't helping the war effort? What's a man supposed to do when their calling in life is muted by their own selfish hands? He stiffly nodded to the padowan, marched back to the Sith/Confederate camp. He dropped his gun in his tent. He kept walking. 

He didn't stop until he got to California. Until he got to Billy.

________________

Years later it's easier to embrace the teaching of Jedi. Anger, though powerful, is altogether exhausting as well as destructive. Mostly he's tired. Billy bring a bit of life back with him, and his Eastern teachings are even more rigid than Goody thought the Southern temple's were, and they get on real well. Real well. 

Jedi aren't supposed to feel romantic love. It's just another of Goody's failings that he feels it for this man, this Jedi that he's corrupted. Billy says it makes him greater than some Jedi because what he feels for Goody frees him, makes him stronger, but that's too close to the Sith creed for Goody to listen to and not get the shivers. 

They're hustling in a little town east of Amaretto Springs when Goody spots him. Leaning against the fence, telltale bulge under his vest, horse nosing a bit too close to be natural. He's got that poker-face Jedi like Billy are good at, but it's not stoic like Billy. It's placid, genial. The tall man isn't in his face, but Goody can tell a Jedi when he sees one. This man has been one for a long time. He has the fleeting thought that the man recognizes him, that he's from the Southern Temple to offer him his place back, but that's not it. This man doesn't have the tan that comes from that mountain area way south, doesn't hold himself straight up and down like a southern acolyte whipped into shape. 

When the man approaches them, Billy steps slightly in front to intercept him and his friend--a boy barely past his first shave if Goody had to guess. The Jedi smiles and offers his hand freely, which Goody reaches forward to take. 

"Name's Faraday, a mister Sam Chisholm told me you could be relied upon to come to his call for help," the man, Faraday, says right off, straight to the point. He gestures expansively behind himself when he says Chisholm's name, like he's point him out in the crowd. Despite himself, Goody does want to help Chisholm. When he'd been running off to California Chisholm gave him a ride out on a spare horse he'd pulled off a criminal, let him tag along almost three hundred miles. Goody eyes Billy on his side and gets a shrug, so he looks back at Faraday and nods his head.

"Sure, boy, if it's Chisholm who needs a hand I'll be much obliged to lend him one. And my associate will be accompanying us, if you don't mind," but he's already turning around, the Jedi he can hear laughing quietly behind him.

"That's perfect."

**Author's Note:**

> i'm more of a faraday gal and i've actually not read a lot of Goody's pov, so this is how i kind of see him. school starts up soon so i figured i'd get this out and decide how far i want to drag out this thing--we're not even 10 minutes into the movie yet i think. jeez. lots more jedi jargon in this part. anyhow, tips/comments/concrit/etc welcome.


End file.
